


Kinder Hands

by CurseUndone



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, In which the Entities are present but not as powerful, Jon trying his best to be emotionally mature, M/M, POV Multiple, Trust, additional tags to be added as we go, canon-typical horror elements, friendship!!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:54:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29287146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurseUndone/pseuds/CurseUndone
Summary: Jon groaned. “I told you I’m fine.”“Unlike Tim, I believe you,” Sasha said, flipping Tim off when he shot her a look of betrayal. “But I also know you’re rubbish at taking care of yourself—” she ignored his protests “—and you’ve been stressed about taking over from Gertrude for literal years.”“And the whole eyeball horror thing,” Tim tacked on.“And the whole eyeball horror thing,” Sasha agreed. “We’d be shit friends if weweren’tworried.”Jon looked down at his glass and wiped some of the condensation off. It would be easier to lie. He was a terrible liar, but they couldn’t contradict what they had no evidence of. He could keep them away from it, and he could cloak his vulnerable insides from their scrutiny. But it wasn’t about him, and it wasn’t about them; it was about himandthem. The two were linked together and always would be. Honesty. If he failed in everything else, he was determined not to fail in this.He nodded. “Okay.” So he told them.--Everyone has reasons for the choices they've made. Of love, hurt, making the world a better place, and how difficult it all is.
Relationships: Jon vs Gertrude, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker
Comments: 16
Kudos: 50





	1. New & Old

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all! This project was born out of a desire to have an Everybody Lives AU that felt plausible to me, and a desire to create a world that looked a lot like TMA canon but where a happy ending was possible. I hope you enjoy what I came up with!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: smoking

Jon signed the contract.

Across from him, a shiver crawled up Gertrude’s spine and crawled down Jon’s like a hitch in the air’s breath. Gertrude bowed her head, eyes squeezed shut, and, for the first time, Jon felt the presence of the Eye. He felt its weight press against the back of his neck, drag down his face, thicken the air around him. The Archives hummed. Gertrude left, shutting his office door behind her. He stood and walked around the desk to the other seat, the seat that was the Archivist’s. His seat now. As of twenty seconds ago.

It was heady. It was strange. It was… No amount of meeting avatars and discussing the nature of the world with Gertrude could have made him understand what he understood now, what was imprinted in the air like the shimmer of a mirage. He wasn’t sure he was breathing. He pressed a hand to his chest, felt it rise and fall, and laughed shakily. Was it supposed to feel like this? So—so _encompassing_? Like he was wrapped up in a weighted blanket ten pounds too heavy for comfort? Everyone’s power comes to them differently. He knew that, he knew, but was this—

The heavy air shifted, and he took a long, deep breath. Up from the base of his skull, a rush of sensation swirled and spread behind his eyes, a warm wash that prickled. As it sank into him, it pulled Jon down, too, and he sank into the Knowing.

> Gertrude Robinson had not liked Angus Stacey. He was the most useless kind of bastard: cold, selfish, clever in the way that proved he was unclever, too fond of his own voice and too interested in his own academic niche. She had not seen him much, having worked as a researcher at the Magnus Institute for only the last year and a half, but she’d not been quiet in her distaste when she had seen him, and, once, she shouted him down during some inane, fidgety argument he was making, and after that he kept his mouth shut and glared at her instead.
> 
> When Angus Stacey gathered his expensive wall art and pretentious knick-knacks to quit the Institute, red-faced from his first and last explosive fight with the Institute Head, Mendelson, Gertrude suspected that she was hired on as Head Archivist the next day purely out of spite. Fine by her; she was only twenty-three with an eclectic and patchy employment history prior to working for the Institute, and Mendelson gave her full reign to pick whoever she wanted as her archival assistants. Gertrude was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and by the end of that same day she moved herself down to the Archives and picked out Eric Delano and Emma Harvey as her assistants, the two most sensible, intelligent, and reliable people she had met at the Institute, and by her measure there were not many. She also inherited Angus’ former assistant, Fiona Law, who, by Gertrude’s measure, was not particularly sensible, intelligent, or reliable, but she had worked under Angus for over a decade, knew his filing system, and had an actual idea what the hell sort of work one did in the Magnus Archives.
> 
> She didn’t feel anything when she signed her contract, and Mendelson gave her nothing except a quick “good luck” and an odd but innocuous comment about watching her back.
> 
> Gertrude Robinson became the Archivist with no practical or theoretical knowledge of the Fears that lurked in her world. She had suspicions, but she had suspicions about anything and everything. She was twenty-three and angry, angry at so many things in this wretched world that hated her. In those first scattered years, she discovered that anger alone could not solve every problem she faced. In time, she would learn how to channel that anger into frigid patience and cutting determination, every lick of flame turned to spikes of ice, but in those first years she tore everything to pieces trying to see the big picture.
> 
> “That is a waste of time,” Gertrude snapped.
> 
> Fiona stared at her, holding a small microphone and a clunky tape recorder. Fiona wasn’t a stupid woman, but when someone gave her an answer she wasn’t expecting, she had to take a moment to process, reassess, and produce something new, rough but usable. “Angus recorded statements.”
> 
> “And why the hell would he do that?”
> 
> Fiona frowned and laid the microphone and tape recorder on Gertrude’s desk. “It’s something the Head Archivist does, that’s what he said. If you don’t like these, there are a bunch of others in storage. Angus was always so enthusiastic about these recording thingies, bought all the ones he could get his hands on. Which was a lot. He always did that, sat here and read statements, always did that the entire time I worked for him, since ’51, and probably long before that, too.”
> 
> Gertrude snorted. “Apologies if I don’t bow to Angus Stacey’s eccentricities. No doubt he wanted to play-act as statement-givers to sate his need for theatrics and as a bonus build an entire library dedicated to his boorish voice.” She pushed the items towards Fiona, resisting the urge to knock them onto the floor. “I want nothing to do with these. Take them and throw them out, ideally.”
> 
> Under the force of Gertrude’s reply, so scathing that its insult became directionless, lashing out at anyone in the vicinity, Fiona wilted. “Yes, Ms. Robinson,” she said and shuffled out.
> 
> “Ridiculous,” Gertrude scoffed.
> 
> It came on slowly enough that she didn’t recognize it for three years.
> 
> She kept her Archives busy. They reinvestigated cases where Gertrude found Research’s attempts lackluster, they filed and organized then refiled and reorganized in a frustrating, endless loop, and they went into the field to chase down rumors that might make their world intelligible. She ordered obscure pamphlets and subscribed to absurd magazines, and she had them remain updated on the news, especially the sort that was shoved into the margins and forgotten. Most of it was useless, made her restless, but she remained vigilant.
> 
> Sometimes, she felt the delicate pressure of eyes on her, the distant yet uncomfortable knowing of a stranger staring from across the street, but it came at no sensible intervals and twitched off her shoulders within the hour. She had felt the same thing in Research, though much less often and much more fleeting. There was nothing to investigate but empty air, but she noted each instance down, when and where it happened. After the fiftieth recording, she stopped bothering.
> 
> “I can’t _stand_ this,” Gertrude growled between her gritted teeth as she paced in the alleyway where she and Emma had stopped to smoke. Another deadend, another witness who had seen so much but couldn’t understand any of it.
> 
> Emma leaned against the wall and took another languid puff. A hint of a smile tugged at her mouth. “Closer than we were months ago.”
> 
> “Right, closer!” Gertrude stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette against the wall and flicked it away. “We know it runs deeper than we thought, we know that there are divisions, different groups serving different goals. God forbid we track one of them down, so that we can make actual progress, instead of interrogating yet another one of their witless victims.”
> 
> Emma arched an eyebrow. “Dangerous wish you have.”
> 
> Gertrude waved that away. “They’re humans wreaking human havoc, for the most part. That’s the most maddening thing about it. If someone gets lost in a fog for an impossible three months, we can’t find and harass the fog for answers, but someone kidnapping nyctophobes to chant hymns at them in a dark, damp basement? Nothing inhuman there besides the intensity of the victims’ fear. We should be able to find them.”
> 
> Emma hummed and allowed Gertrude to charge forward.
> 
> “Would’ve been too easy if Stacey had made any goddamn notes. Just tape after tape of himself reading statements, not even a comment afterwards or a date written on the cassette. No journal, no notes in the margins of files, no scraps of paper with errant thoughts – nothing! As if he kept all of it in his head, positive that he had perfect recall. Arrogant prick.”
> 
> Behind a cloud of smoke, Emma laughed, a chuckle from deep in her throat. “You’re jealous he knew more than you do.”
> 
> “Piss off,” Gertrude fumed. And then, “Of course I am! The dolt thought his green suits were attractive and his expensive watches made him more intelligent, and he probably knows exactly what’s happening.”
> 
> “Contacted him yet?”
> 
> Gertrude gave herself a moment to stew in the indignity, then replied, “He moved to Germany. He won’t answer my letters or take my calls. _Bastard_.”
> 
> “We’ll get there,” Emma assured her lightly, still smiling.
> 
> “Sooner rather than later.” She said it as a promise.
> 
> It came on slowly enough that when she had an epiphany about a stubborn case that they’d worked on for a _month_ , she thought the knowledge came from her. Maybe it did; the lines were blurry. But it happened again, and it happened again, and it happened again, always Gertrude striving for a single piece of information, clawing for it blindly while knowing it was there, and then it appeared without fanfare in her mind. She didn’t notice the oddity.
> 
> Gertrude was no sweet-talker; when witnesses were uncooperative, she never tried more than a wheedling word or two. Her assistants conducted most of the interviews and were much more successful. But slowly, without discussion, they started to leave Gertrude the interviews of those willing, if not eager, to answer questions and recount any new developments. Their stories spilled out of them with a guided ease, like water gliding down the bends of its stream, the correct details paused on and obscurities remembered with clarity. Without knowing why, the archival assistants started to say, “Oh, this one is for Gertrude,” and they did not think to ask why, outside of a few jokes about the irony of their hard-nosed boss being the best sounding board for the vulnerable.
> 
> And at some point, Gertrude began to murmur words here or there as she read through a statement. She didn’t notice, not until she read an entire sentence loud enough for the words to take on discernable shapes. She stopped, clutched the papers in a too-tight grip. _What am I doing?_ she thought. Keeping the words behind her teeth this time, she reread the last sentence: _I tried to stay silent, I did, but the fear caught in my throat was thick enough to choke me, and I did._ She read it twice more, lingering over each word longer and longer with each pass. As her eyes turned to _I tried_ for a fourth reading, she coughed to dislodge a tickle in her throat. She began to mouth along, then caught herself and pressed her lips into a firm line. She wanted to read it again. No, something _inside her_ wanted to read it again, wanted to know how the words would feel choked with fear.
> 
> _Oh_ , she thought, all at once. _Here’s the power I was searching for._
> 
> Her first urge was to tear the statement to shreds or shove it back into its folder so she could fling it across the room. Instead, she smoothed the crinkled paper and flipped to the first page. Despite her revelation, a thousand questions trampled over it, crushing it to nothing. More warning than revelation, all ominous whispers with no substance.
> 
> With a start, she felt it. A pulse beat. It spread out ripples that soon faded, a twinge compared to the strong beat of her heart. Quiet, weak, hidden in her skull, begging, insisting…
> 
> “No. Absolutely not,” Gertrude told it.
> 
> She read the rest of the statement without another word.

The pressure relented, and Jon blinked away the image of young Gertrude, straight-backed and severe, but the taste of her defiance lingered sour in his mouth. The air was light, the Eye a subtle thrum around him, quiet but obvious in its place of power.

He breathed in, out, then whispered, “What the fuck was that?”

He was still sorting through the rush of names and faces and feelings he had seen – he had _Known_ – when someone knocked on his office door. “Y-yes?”

Tim stepped in, shutting the door most of the way behind him. With false cheer, he asked, “Hey boss, you possessed yet?”

“No! No, no, I’m not,” Jon stumbled to reassure him. He was half-dizzy with confusion but very much in control of himself. His mind had been flooded, not invaded.

“Feeling spooky yet?” Tim pressed with a waggle of his fingers.

Jon rolled his eyes. “Not ‘spooky’, since we’re not in primary, but…yes. We were right. The awareness came on rather strong.” He pressed his fingers to the desk, and the Archives hummed back. “I should talk to Gertrude.”

“If you can find her.” Tim jerked a thumb behind him. “Power-walked out of here like her favorite true crime podcast just updated.”

“Great.” He sighed. As he stood, he grabbed his contract and held it out to Tim. “Could you run this up to Sarah?”

“In charge for five minutes and already working us to the bone. Tsk, tsk.” Tim took the paper but hesitated a moment too long in turning, still intent on Jon.

“I’m fine, Tim. Really.”

Tim quirked a smile, the one that meant, _It’s cute that you think that._ “I think we’ll be the judge of that,” he told him and headed out.

Jon followed without complaint, even if he thought Tim was being overdramatic, but paused in the hallway leading away from the assistants’ office space. Tim disappeared up the stairs; Sasha hunched over her laptop, focused; and Martin, due to his last-minute arrival, was still organizing his desk. He had paused to look after Jon, then startled when the man himself turned to look back, and he fumbled to continue sorting out his many multicolored pens. Jon tried not to glare – there was someone better to blame than him – but he knew he was anyway.

Outside the Institute, he called Gertrude’s mobile. Nothing, of course.

An hour and a half later, he found her in the Chelsea Physic Garden, sitting on the ground off a smaller dirt path, her back pressed carefully against a short stone wall, chain smoking. It was a cloudy August afternoon, thankfully dry, and she was half-hidden between the shrubbery and shadow.

“I think that’s illegal,” Jon said, gesturing towards the discarded cigarette butts beside her.

“I’m celebrating,” Gertrude replied, flicking away the last burnt stub and without pause lighting another. One hand held the cigarette near her face between drags, and the other fussed with her Zippo, old and battered with a tacky blue flames pattern. The steel grey of her hair was tied back into a tight bun, and her clothing was warm, soft, and dull, her cardigan buttoned up. Compared to the sharp lines and ferocity of her younger self, she was unassuming, muted, but her eyes were the same: piercing.

“By crouching in a botanical garden?”

“No CCTV here. Not that I can feel them anymore. Corruption doesn’t care for this place either, too many associations with health and medicine.” She shrugged. “A useless precaution, I suppose. The Entities won’t care much about me anymore.”

Jon had his doubts about that, but he said, “I had a… vision, of sorts, after you left. Or— It was more like a mass of detailed knowledge appeared in my mind unprompted.”

When he didn’t elaborate, Gertrude gestured him on. “Knowledge of what?”

“You. When you became Archivist.”

“Appropriate.” Unperturbed, she took another drag and blew it out unhurriedly.

God, she was infuriating. “And? No questions, no concerns? No cunning insights?”

“No.” Her lips pursed slightly. Disappointed. “Everyone comes to their power differently, and I suppressed mine for as long as I knew I had it. You have made it abundantly clear you will not be following me in that.”

“Is that why you transferred Martin Blackwood to the Archives without telling me?” he spat. There went his temper.

“You needed someone to make up for Timothy Stoker. He’s more impulsive than you, and that is saying something.” The disappointment faded from her expression, back to her cold mask of neutrality. “Martin is sensible. And patient, so he’ll put up with you. Don’t bother talking to Sarah about him. We have an understanding.”

“Perfect! I’m glad that you value my judgement so highly!”

Gertrude smoked.

Jon clenched his jaw, and eventually gritted out, “Goodbye, Gertrude.”

“I’ll see you soon, Archivist.”

Jon cursed her under his breath the entire walk back to the Institute.


	2. Welcome & Farewell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helloooo! I am vibrating with excitement to continue to show you guys each chapter. This one has one of my favorite scenes I've written so far in it. Hope you enjoy! <3  
> 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: alcohol / compulsion (of a child; non-violent); bug (mention)

“Jon!”

“Oh, good lord,” he sighed and looked towards the stairs to the upper floors. At the top, Sarah Carpenter stood in a straight, proud line, hands clasped together on her cane. She waved at him. “Wait a moment!” Rather than summon him to her, she descended towards him.

“There’s a perfectly good elevator right behind you,” he told her, exasperated, ascending anyway.

She scoffed, “I’m fifty-five, not _eighty_. I can walk down the stairs just fine.” He arrived beside her before she could maneuver down more than four steps, and she jabbed his leg with her cane in thanks. When he yelped and jumped back, she laughed. “Serves you right.” She was a stout woman, everything from her calloused fingers to her thick black hair solid and strong. She wore a long, bright pleated dress with a light coat overtop, and, even scowling, her dense spray of freckles made her look playful.

“Did you want something from me?” Jon asked, trying and failing to hide his annoyance.

She ignored his sour mood. “As the Head of the Institute, I wanted to extend my formal congratulations.” She smiled, and her voice warmed. “I’m excited to see what you do, and I’m honored to work with you. I know to you I’m part of Gertrude’s old guard, and you think we’re all terribly outdated, so I’m sure my opinion doesn’t matter much, but I think you are going to do wonderfully, Jonathan Sims.”

“Thank you, Sarah.” He stretched his lips until his teeth were bared, a mockery of her friendly face. “Does this mean you’ll transfer Martin Blackwood back to wherever he came from if I ask you to?”

Her expression fell in disappointment. Hers was less subtle than Gertrude’s and stung far less. “No. Gertrude requested his transfer before she resigned, and Martin accepted. What’s more, Eric recommended him highly, insisted upon him going, really. If you’re that determined to send him back up, speak to Eric.”

Jon clenched his hands, took a step back. “Of course, I understand,” he replied acidly. “You all must do Gertrude’s bidding to the last, mustn’t you? At least Michael is honest about it.”

“Jon—”

But he was already at the stairs and heading down into the Archives.

Less than a minute later, Tim ushered him out again with an arm around his shoulders, reminding him that he had promised yesterday that he would take the rest of the day off after he bound himself to the incomprehensible voyeurism god, and, while he was at it, he might as well give his assistants and very good friends the day off to spend it with him. (To keep an eye on him, Jon thought.) Sasha was a step behind them, laughing as Tim teased and Jon groused. Martin was already gone, had left as soon as he was told.

Tim steered them to their favorite pub, an ill-lit, cosy place with a constant low murmur of conversation and where every booth felt as if it was tucked into its own private corner. The motions were all familiar, taking their usual spots, ordering, repeating bits of old conversations – “Scoot over already” – “Don’t know how you drink that stuff” – “Spoilsport!” – and Jon relaxed into the overstuffed cushions and sipped his water. He drank on Fridays or Saturdays or not at all, and today was Tuesday. Sasha took off her boots and stuck her socked feet between Tim and Jon, further trapping Jon in the booth, and held her cheap, watered-down beer against her chest, and Tim leaned on the table with both elbows, drinking his rum and coke through a straw like a child.

“So…” Tim took a sip and then smacked his lips together obnoxiously, knowing Sasha would kick him. He grinned and blew her a kiss, then turned to Jon.

Jon groaned. “I told you I’m fine.”

“Unlike Tim, I believe you,” Sasha said, flipping Tim off when he shot her a look of betrayal. “But I also know you’re rubbish at taking care of yourself—” she ignored his protests “—and you’ve been stressed about taking over from Gertrude for literal years.”

“And the whole eyeball horror thing,” Tim tacked on.

“And the whole eyeball horror thing,” Sasha agreed. “We’d be shit friends if we _weren’t_ worried.”

Jon looked down at his glass and wiped some of the condensation off. It would be easier to lie. He was a terrible liar, but they couldn’t contradict what they had no evidence of. He could keep them away from it, he could cloak his vulnerable insides from their scrutiny. But it wasn’t about him, and it wasn’t about them; it was about him _and_ them. The two were linked together and always would be. Honesty. If he failed in everything else, he was determined not to fail in this.

He nodded. “Okay.” So he told them.

A little over three hours had passed since he took on the mantle of the Archivist. The awareness settled into his mind comfortably, integrating into the cracks and sharp places. It disconcerted him to know how little it needed to shift to attach itself to him. That had been his goal, so he could master it as soon as possible, but he could not have anticipated the _feeling_ it gave. Eager as he was to stare into the abyss, he had not thought that when the abyss stared back he would recognize himself in it. _You want to Know_. “If it were stronger…” He shook his head.

“What, you would _really_ be a monster?” Tim said, too bitter to be light-hearted.

“Tim,” Sasha chided.

Tim glared at the table, took a long drink from his rum and coke. “Sorry. It’s hard to be grateful things aren’t worse when we’re starting at rock bottom with ‘eldritch manifestations of fear exist’.”

The connection between he and the Eye felt horribly right, but it was weak like a child’s clumsy grip. All of its strength latched onto him, yet he could shrug it off and sign it over to someone else tomorrow. He wouldn’t, but he could, he knew he could. A true choice, Gertrude had called it, and he could appreciate it now, this small victory.

He hesitated on the next part, the Knowing. He fixed Tim with a hard stare. “You’re supposed to trust me.”

Tim crossed his arms. “I can trust you _and_ flip the fuck out.”

“He’s multi-dimensional,” Sasha deadpanned. They all cracked a smile, and Tim snickered.

These were his friends, Jon reminded himself. Real, actual friends, who dragged him away for drinks and pissed him off and made him laugh. So he told them.

The vision of Gertrude had been clear and complete yet at the same time a vague mess, like a beautifully-crafted description that you couldn’t quite picture, or an explanatory simile that confused you more than before. He could remember Fiona’s face perfectly, feel a trace of Gertrude’s thoughts, but the papers she clutched in her hands were immaterial, the full blaze of her anger muted. He had seen years in seconds, and it felt both like every single one of those years and only those few seconds. He tried to encapsulate all of it, all he saw and felt, not wanting to accidentally leave out something important, but he was sure that he was being incoherent.

At the beginning, Tim did interrupt with a shout restrained down to a hiss, “You get your spooky powers for _five minutes_ and your mind gets hijacked for some guided tour through the past? Are you kidding me?” But Sasha shushed him, and at the end of Jon’s rambling, when his words started turning in on upon themselves in aimless circles, Tim was quiet, chomping on his straw and looking down at the table.

“What did Gertrude say when you found her?” Sasha asked.

“Nothing useful. She seemed more invested in insulting me than helping.”

Tim muttered something under his breath, and Sasha groaned, “Ugh, that _bitch_.”

“She’s the one who hired Martin, and of course she told everyone to go along with it, so they did. Yes, that’s exactly what I need immediately upon my promotion, fighting with the senior staff and dealing with an assistant I don’t trust and don’t know anything about.”

Sasha leaned forward over the table. “His CV’s fake, you know.” Then she leaned back, eyebrows raised.

Jon frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that he says he’s 37 with a parapsychology degree, but his schooling stopped in 2004, and he’s definitely not gone to uni.”

Tim gave her a disbelieving look. “Jesus, Sash, you’ve been in academia for too long. Who cares if he lied on his CV?”

Sasha held her hands up. “Look, I’m not saying he’s incompetent, but if Gertrude wanted to sabotage us for whatever inane reason…”

Jon said, “She’s not that petty. She just thinks she’s always right.” A beat. “And Sasha, stop hacking people!”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Hardly hacking.”

They finished their drinks and headed out soon after. At the intersection where their paths home diverged, Sasha squeezed Jon’s wrist and Tim hugged him. Jon watched them as they walked away hand-in-hand, then continued on.

Before heading inside, Jon leaned back against the rough brick of his building and looked up. The moon was bright through the thin wisps of cloud, dim stars splashed around it. Two years ago, he started to have nightmares about the full moon glaring down on him like a spotlight. Its serene calm transformed to alien observation, and he bought blackout curtains so that it could never peek into his room uninvited. It was a silly fear – Tim would tease him mercilessly if he knew – but on clear nights when everything glowed with the cold wash of the moon’s light, Jon couldn’t help but think of eyes and the unknown and all the malevolence they had never earned or asked for. Now, knowing firsthand Beholding’s hum, it looked inert. Imposing, impressive, but distant. It couldn’t reach him if it wanted to. Jon smirked and went inside.

The next morning, Michael arrived as Jon was flipping on the lights around the Archive. As usual, Michael wore his hair down, blond strands tucked behind his ears and curling over his shoulders, and his mass of metal bracelets jangled together on his right wrist. Today, his brand of garish was an orange-and-red blazer over a too-bright paisley shirt and denim shorts hemmed with rainbow thread. Jon’s eyes watered to look at him, but at least he wasn’t wearing his wind chime earrings. Small mercies.

“It’s good to see you,” Michael said. He opened his arms, asking for permission, and Jon hugged him, a firm hug he let linger longer than he normally would, because Michael’s eyes were red-rimmed and there was nothing else to do for it.

“You saw me yesterday,” Jon said, stepping back.

“But I won’t see you as much anymore.” Michael smiled. It wobbled, but it was bright and sincere. Any other time, Jon would gripe over how soppy Michael sounded – it was just _Jon_ – but instead his heart ached, and he wanted to stab Gertrude, and he had no idea how to handle any of it.

“Well,” he started, blank as to where to go next. “Well,” he repeated conclusively.

Michael giggled. “It’s okay. Where are your assistants?”

The air pressure rose suddenly, knocking the breath out of him. “They’re—” His skin vibrated, as if he stood next to a speaker with thumping bass. “They’re, uh—” A cut of movement swiped up through his spine and unfurled at the base of his skull, a burst of leaves and petals in spring. By the time he figured out what was happening, he was pulled into the Knowing.

> Michael Shelley liked ghost stories. He wasn’t interested in the the messy humanity of them, the questions of mortality, the specific mechanics and abilities, the complexities of the soul, instinct, nature, responsibility, identity. No, it was simple: they were strange, and he wanted to understand their strangeness.
> 
> His grandmother told him a thousand ghost stories. When he was young, Grandma Lottie held his hand as they walked through the streets, and she pointed out building after building and told him a story for each and every one. There was a spirit behind every wall, under every rock, in every shadow the light couldn’t reach, she said. All you had to do was look past the world and see them. Her stories were full of holes and sometimes names changed midway through, and they ended like a page torn out, but they were so vivid Michael felt them in his chest. She was an animated speaker, dropping his hand to make grand gestures until he caught it in his again. She talked loud and fast and with a delighted confidence that could not be questioned. When he asked her to repeat something, she always said something different and then insisted it was what she had meant all along. She had the brightest smile he had ever seen, and it made him smile back long after his cheeks grew sore, and even when her stories were grisly and horrible, she smiled and made him smile back.
> 
> One day, a day the same as any other after a visit like any other, his mother told him he would never see Grandma Lottie again. Her hands were tight on the steering wheel, her lips pressed white. He didn’t understand, and he was frightened, so the next day he snuck out and rode his bike to his grandmother’s house. His mum found him a few hours later and tried to drag him away. He screamed at her, his anguish deep and wide and ringing. He didn’t stop screaming until he wriggled out of her grip and ran over to Grandma Lottie to cling to her waist, face smashed into her belly.
> 
> “Michael!” his mum said sharply. Her voice trembled, and he didn’t understand why. “Michael, _please_.”
> 
> “One last story,” Grandma said. She carded her gnarled fingers through his hair. “To remember me by.”
> 
> Michael nodded into her stomach, clung tighter. Silence. With a small, choked sound, his mum’s heels clicked across the hardwood out of the room. They were alone.
> 
> Grandma Lottie let him cry until he exhausted himself. He let go and slumped down to the floor to sit at her feet, looking up at her. She was so fragile with her paper skin and thin bones that ground together, but her cheeks were rosy and her movements bursting with energy, as if she were seconds away from dancing. He loved her so much.
> 
> “Story?” he whispered, his throat sore, everything aching.
> 
> She smiled, and he smiled back, but he noticed her mouth stretched wider than it should have. She spoke slower than usual, savoring each word. “There was a house on Dewberry Street once, nothing special. Barely noticeable. Behind it was a barren field. No one took care of it, and it was ugly and wild. A woman named Charlotte Maslow lived there. Do you remember her?”
> 
> Michael frowned. “That’s your name, Grandma.”
> 
> “Nonsense. I’ve never heard that name before in my life.” She waved a dismissive hand at him. “Irene Maslow lived there.” He opened his mouth to protest that that was _mum’s_ name, but she continued quickly. “She was very unhappy, because she was dead. She didn’t know she was dead, but she was dead. A lot of people are dead, you know.” She winked at him. “Irene sat out in her backyard every day. There was no fence that separated her from the field. It was grey and ugly, full of nasty bugs and skittering rodent feet. She hated looking at it, but she looked at it. Irene was always rather stupid.” She chuckled, a brash and musical thing, and Michael smiled despite the twist in his gut. “She threw a rock into the tall bushes. ‘I’ll change it,’ she said and went inside. Do you know about footsteps?”
> 
> She never asked him questions. He was so confused between the question and the asking that his mouth never got around to anything except mouthing shapes.
> 
> “Yes!” his grandmother cried, as if his stunned silence was poetry. “Scars. Touch something, and it changes. But the house couldn’t change it. She went inside. She kicked the grass. It was green and ugly. Irene was dead, the usual sort of dead. Locked-in-her-skin dead. The breathing sort of dead. Dead, dead, dead.” She repeated it again in a discordant sing-song. Michael wanted to cry. He was worried about his mother. “Oh, what was next?” She tapped her chin, pretending to think. “Ah, yes. Not a thing grew in the field. It was bleak. She ran across it like a stranded survivor in the desert. Bones cracked under her feet. She didn’t like the tinkling sound. Whenever she turned, she found herself back at the house. Dear, I don’t think you understand what I mean. She is _dead_.” Her eyes blinked out of sync with each other. She smiled, and he smiled back.
> 
> “Irene knows enough is enough. She tears up a floorboard and eats it. The house is alive. It’s wrong. She eats the plaster in the walls and the glass in the windows. Everything is supposed to die. The field crawls with snakes and rabbits and maggots. Think about them. It is very important you imagine them. Go on. Do you see their legs and fangs and tails?” Her fingers twitched like each one was a jumping cricket’s leg, jerky and violent. Michael nodded, again and again. Was she shouting? “Good, good. There is nothing on Sewtarry Street but a field. There is no road. Irene has always lived there, but she doesn’t know she has always lived there. She is _very_ stupid. Everything is dead. Everything is supposed to be dead. She knows that now. She eats the house, every splinter.” She smiled wider, blissful, and Michael matched her.
> 
> “Irene lies in the grass in the field. She can’t sleep. The house is dead, and she is happy, because it is dead, and Irene is dead, and she knows it. Charlotte stands up and walks into the lush field. She can see the other side, but she’ll never reach it. It changes.” With a sigh, she leaned back, nodding in satisfaction.
> 
> Michael burst into laughter. Clutching his head, he rocked back and forth with the force of it, so dizzy that each movement sent his vision spinning over and under itself, blurring in the middle, crystallizing at the edges. The laughter leaked out through his pores and dived back in through his gasping mouth. She was dead! Whatever that meant, it meant she was dead. The laughter scrambled out of his throat like he was coughing up a hunk of meat. He was dying, too. Tears of mirth streamed down his face, and he smiled.
> 
> A shout, sharp strikes of sound, warm pressure, movement. His eyes focused enough to see Grandma Lottie in her chair, full of enthusiasm and joy. She looked so happy. “Goodbye, love!” She waved, and he was gone.
> 
> He came to in his bed, his mother’s hand on his face. He clutched her hand to keep it in place and sobbed, despite the migraine slicing behind his eyes. They stayed there for a long time. Michael held her hand and stared mesmerized at how solid and heavy she was, how clear-cut and present and _beautiful_ she was. They did not speak a word, except for once, when his mother whispered a full, quiet “I love you.”
> 
> Michael never saw his grandmother again, but he remembered her ghost stories.

For a moment, the two Michaels blended together, half narrow and defined and half round and smooth-skinned. Then Jon blinked, and the younger faded as the last of his fear bled away and Jon’s breath came back easy.

Michael steadied him with a hand on his shoulder, brow furrowed. “Hey, are you alright?”

Jon couldn’t help but grin looking at him, ridiculous eyesore color palette and bundles of fluffy hair, so bold compared to his younger self’s plain clothes in solid, muted colors and hair cut so short it could hardly curl.

It slid off and into a grimace as he reminded himself _how_ he knew that. “Quite alright,” Jon assured him. “I was, er…It was something from Beholding. I’m not sure how it works yet.” After an awkward pause, he added in a rush, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Michael repeated, bewildered. “Sorry for what?” But before Jon could answer, he shook his head. “Nevermind. Whatever it is, it’s alright. Not my job anymore.”

“Lucky bastard.”

Michael squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t worry, I believe in you.”

When Tim, Sasha, and – Jon sighed – _Martin_ arrived, he pushed the Knowing from his mind. Tim gave him a suspicious look, but Jon hissed, “Later,” and he relented.

If there was anything good to be said for Gertrude as a boss, it was that she trained efficient assistants. After thirty years under her, Michael knew how best to be clear, concise, and thorough, to the point that even Sasha only had a handful of clarifying questions. Despite the chaos of the Archives, the accumulation of Gertrude’s forty-eight years as Archivist compounded with her inane policy of using disorder as a security measure that she began implementing in the mid-’90s, Michael had an incredible grasp on the “organization” of the mess. Though all signs pointed to the contrary, Gertrude hadn’t lied when she insisted that there was a system to it. Mostly. Some of its intricacies she kept to herself to this day, and there were some files and references Gertrude had mixed in at random, so that she had to use her powers to find them again. She had not kept a record or given Michael a list of these purposefully lost files. They all took down meticulous notes, Jon musing where and how they should start in order to distract himself from his building irritation. When Michael reached the end of his lecture, they collectively slumped their shoulders in relief.

“Hopefully that helps?” Michael said.

“It does,” Jon said. “Thanks to you, it might only take a few decades to sort all this out rather than lifetimes.”

Michael laughed. “Happy to make your lives easier if I can.” With obvious restraint, Michael said his goodbyes and hugged each of them (including Martin, who looked rather shocked as he hugged back) before wishing them well again and waving as he left.

Tim threw out his arms. “Our Archive now, baby! No more old bastards telling us how to do things.”

Sasha clapped. “Now we’ve just got to clean up all their mistakes.”

“Which means it is time to get to work,” Jon said. “Since Gertrude didn’t differentiate between statements that were real and not, I think it’s best we begin with the latest—”

“ _Ahem_.” Sasha cleared her throat loudly. “Forgetting something, are we?” Her eyes flickered over to Martin.

“Oh, hell.” Jon sighed. “Martin doesn’t know anything.”

Martin bristled. “I was taking notes, same as the rest of you,” he insisted, waving his phone.

“No, no, it’s—not that. There’s…er…” Jon looked at Tim and Sasha for help. It had been easier to explain the terrifying mess of it all when he was half out of his mind between pain, painkillers, and panic, rather than clear-headed and uncomfortable under the authority thrust into his hands.

“Monsters are real,” Tim summarized. Sasha grimaced at the oversimplication but nodded.

“Oh,” Martin said, looking more confused than before. “I know monsters are real.”

Jon cut a hand through the air. “Not cryptids or ghosts or anything absurd like that—”

“Well, there _are_ ghosts,” Sasha began.

Jon prepared to stop her, as this wasn’t the time to nitpick details, but Martin cut in first with a little laugh. “No, I know,” he said. “You mean the Fears, right?”

Jon, Tim, and Sasha stared at him, all three rendered speechless.

Martin frowned. “Did I say something wrong?”

“You _know_?” Jon exclaimed. His voice hardened. “Gertrude didn’t tell you.”

“No, I’ve known for a few years. When I became Eric’s assistant, Gerard told me.”

“ _Why_? Why would Gerry do that?”

“He called Eric a hypocrite. Said it wasn’t right, working here and not knowing.”

“Which we agree with,” Sasha added, raising an eyebrow at Jon.

Jon averted his eyes. “Right. No explanation needed then.”

“No,” Martin replied. His smile was tense.

“Good.”

Before Jon could return to his interrupted orders, Tim turned on him. “Before we came in, did it happen again? The creepy infodump the Eye gave you? Or was it something else? You had the same dazed look you had yesterday after you signed the contract, so don’t try to say it was nothing.”

The need for honesty squirmed in Jon’s chest. He hadn’t had a moment to process this Knowing yet, and here Tim was demanding he confess. It was overwhelming, especially in front of the stranger in their midst. He wanted one or two hours, but their eyes were on him now, waiting for him to answer, and Tim was right, anyway: this wasn’t something he could brush off as inconsequential. It had come upon him two days in a row. He couldn’t control it, didn’t know when it was coming. It felt harmless, but when had the Powers done anything harmless? “Is this really the time?” he tried anyway.

Tim crossed his arms sternly.

“Okay, _fine_.

“You know about the position of the Archivist, I assume?” he asked Martin, who nodded. “Well, the past two years I have tried my best to…encourage the Eye. As a result, the Eye has made a stronger connection to me than we could have anticipated. Twice now—” he leaned back a touch and straightened his back to face Tim and Sasha as he continued, “—it has forced knowledge on me from other times and places. Yesterday, I saw Gertrude as a young Archivist. Today, I saw Michael as a boy with his grandmother, who I suspect was associated with the Spiral. I have no idea why these memories were the ones that were chosen. Both times, the presence of the Eye increased, the information was impressed upon me, and I returned to myself shortly thereafter, all without my control.”

“You realize how bad this sounds,” Tim said, flat.

“It looks bad, I admit, but—”

“ _Jon_ , it’s forcing shit into your head! How is that not something to freak out over?”

“The Eye doesn’t care about people, it cares about information. I’m fine.”

“Are you hearing yourself?” Tim shouted.

“Cool off, Stoker,” Sasha said, stepping forward with her hands up. “I know you’re overprotective, but getting angry isn’t helpful.”

“Overprotective? There’s no such thing as overprotective here. There’s either ‘be careful’ or ‘die’.”

Sasha sighed in frustration. “He’s not your little brother, Tim.”

Tim’s face turned stony. He turned and picked up his coat, swinging it on. Sasha started to say his name, but he interrupted her in a tight voice. “Unless you _want_ me to punch a wall, you’ll let me go.” His eyes glanced over at Jon. “Look, I’m sorry.” Then he left, his stomping steps loud and echoing from the stairwell.

When they faded, Sasha tugged at the bottom of her shirt until it sat in the correct place, hands clenched. “He’s right,” she said. “This is serious. We don’t know what we’re dealing with. Until we do, we need to keep an, er, eye on you.” She half-smiled at the accidental pun.

“I don’t need constant monitoring,” Jon told her.

“I agree. I meant that we need more information, so you need to tell us about it when this happens again, and we’ll watch out for you. We can track this, assess the threat, maybe figure out a pattern.”

Begrudgingly, Jon nodded. It would’ve been easier if he’d said it. “That sounds reasonable.”

“…And you should have an escort on your press tour.”

“I am _not_ —”

“Regardless of whether the Eye wants to harm you, if this Knowing thing happens when you’re talking to an avatar, you’ll be vulnerable. I don’t trust any of them not to take advantage of the opportunity.”

She was right. His pride smarted at the idea of conceding after months of arguing that he was capable on his own, that it was safer for both him and them, that random assassinations were rare and, if anything, their presence would make other avatars less inclined to offer vital information. But she was right. He screwed up his face and forced out, “Christ, fine! Fine.” He crossed his arms, looked to Sasha and then Martin, who had sat silent and motionless during the entire conversation. Martin gave him another awkward smile. “Let’s get to work, shall we?”


	3. Help & Hurt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Introducing new characters is such a thrill, I really love all of them dearly. This chapter includes a very dumb joke I have been waiting to unveil for a while and makes me laugh maybe more than it’s worth, hahaha. Enjoy!  
> I’ve also changed how the format of the warnings for each chapter to distinguish the cws of the Knowings vs. the cws of the rest of the chapter. From now on, the cws for the rest of the chapter will come first then a /, and the Knowing cws will be listed. If one or the other doesn’t have any cws, there will be an “N/A” instead. I also am going to compile all the cws at the end note of the work. Of course, if you think anything should be added to these lists, let me know!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: N/A / possession; dissociation; psychic torture; non-con tattooing; scopophobia; smoking mention

Muzzy from sleep, Jon curled onto his side and clutched his blankets close, warming them with each breath. Valiantly, he did not close his eyes but allowed them to sort out the unfocused shapes of his bedroom at their leisure. Jon had always slept badly, but a quiet lie-in with the morning sun dimmed to a dull glow by the curtains was so soothing, a relaxation better than sleep. No whirring, worrying mind, no disjointed images, no responsibilities, just soft and warm. He didn’t close his eyes, because he had already shut off his alarm, but he was tempted.

The heavy, warm air thickened. His eyes fluttered closed but drifted open again. He tugged the blankets tighter over his mouth, shifted his shoulders under their comforting weight. A trickle of sweat slid down his spine, except – it slid _up_ , past his hairline and out around his skull. It tickled like gentle pins and needles, a pleasant sensation but for how deep it reached, sharpening and blurring his vision as it prickled behind his eyes. Still half-convinced it was his blankets’ doing, Jon was pulled into the Knowing.

> The monster in Elias’ head, that controlled Elias’ body, wanted him to die. Elias— no. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, blurring and blurring as it never slept, drowned him out, the pinprick hole of his awareness shrinking and shrinking, skin detached, thoughts floating on abstract ether, but—but he was sure it had been too long, and every day it warped his lips to speak the name his parents had pressed out between thin scolding lips and his boyfriends had snorted out through their smirks and his own voice had chirped as he grasped someone’s hand, and it kept—it kept _saying it_ like it was its own: Eh-ly-ahs, Ihl-ai-us, Ee-lie-yuhs, subtle bastardizations on that which was his. Not his now. Its name. He was not Elias Bouchard. He wasn’t anyone anymore. He was…waiting to die, not wanting to die.
> 
> It moved and talked and lived his life. He tried to hold onto the glimpses he stole through the fragmentation of its many-eyed sight, but – was that Rosie? was that his reflection? did that shadow shudder? – none of it cohered after so long, so many changes. He’d never spent time in the admin block, but that’s where Vic worked, Vic he saw pass again and again. Probably Vic. He couldn’t focus anymore, but he remembered he thought over and over again, _that’s Vic, that’s Vic, why him?_ and why would he have thought that unless it was really him? He was restless. He wished he could feel sweat on his palms.
> 
> **_You are so tiresome_** , it intoned, booming and rattling and scattering and it _hurt_. **_Why do you insist on bothering me?_** The words screamed like a high-pitched tone, physically crawling through him, visually glaring in overbright lines. He didn’t want to hurt, and he didn’t want to die. Elias Bouchard was dead, but he could be someone else after that, rather than – rather than a shrieking vibration. If it released him. **_Oh, Elias. Have you forgotten what you should really be afraid of?_ **Afraid? Afraid? There’s more to fear? Not possible. He—no, he—his thoughts are compressed down to thin jagged lines, no breadth to contain nuance, all of it shoved in and— ** _Shut. Up. Heavens, you are insufferable. Listen to me._**
> 
> He listened, thoughts jumbling and trembling in his nowhere unconnected space.
> 
> **_Do the angles cut you when you try to think? I’m sure they do. You are in such an unenviable position, Elias. But being hurt is trivial. There are so many people who endure such incredible pain, all in silence, unnoticed. But I see everything. I see every twinge of your pitiful fear. I know how much you hurt, and I WILL NEVER HELP. I could, but I won’t. I’d rather you be quiet, but if you’re going to make a fuss, I might as well amuse myself. Isn’t that agony? You could content yourself with the Spiral, but not with me. Not when I’m watching._ **
> 
> Elias – no, _no_ – he couldn’t—
> 
> **_Look._ **
> 
> His awareness focused to a reflection, blurred and streaked but unmistakable: his face stretched by a gleeful smile, the sharp narrowness of his cheekbone and jaw that he had once admired in a mirror like this one, his dark hair cut short and neat like it hadn’t been since he was a child and his mother could wrangle him to a barber, making him look severe. His eyes were the same but duller, desaturated and greyed-out. It was… It wasn’t him.
> 
> **_It IS you._** It forced his smile wider, twisting symmetrical and cruel like he never could. **_But I’m using you._** It took his hand and traced a finger down his cheek. **_If only I could have taken you as a younger man. I remember you were quite handsome. A few too many wrinkles now for my taste._** It turned his face to a three-quarters view and swept his hand under his ear. **_I do enjoy your penchant for flashy earrings. Very fun, I think. This, however…_** It tapped the left side of his chest. Underneath the fancy suit was a tattoo he’d had done in uni, a stupid decision that still made him laugh: a weed leaf set into a diamond almost the size of his fist. It guaranteed him a round of mocking whenever someone caught sight of it, but he loved it, loved the mocking, even, because the absurd thing deserved it. **_It’s atrocious. I’m planning to have it covered up. Something that suits the one ruling the Eye’s temple._**
> 
> No.
> 
> It chuckled darkly. **_What else am I to do? You need a good reminder._** It leaned close to the mirror, but its – his – image didn’t blur. His – _its_ – eyes bore into him.
> 
> White-hot pain, the sort that edged on insensible, appeared like a sudden light through him. Scouring slices flayed him to translucent slivers. Illumination, scorching illumination, a spotlight through his thinnest, most vulnerable parts, the edges pulsing with glimmering light. The black of a pupil consumed the iris, a reflectionless void that took and took and took.
> 
> All at once: the irrepressible memory of an old friend lying dead, his eye sockets bloody holes; the loss of true feeling, the loss of humanity, a bodiless body in his own body; the rotting film of scum wrapped around him like a suffocating embrace, cold and uncaring and crushing him until he was small and dying and held on not by determination but the hooks that linked him to Elias Bouchard; the fade of familiarity, of the sensation of paper under his fingertips and the heat of coffee settling in his stomach; the heightening of the twisted cerebral corridors he once drowned out with television and twitter and smoke, the way his mind chewed on a thought and never let it go, kept pressing, kept pressing, no matter how irrational or unhelpful; the shock of seeing his own face and the lack of shock of seeing it; the knowledge that he was unspecial and always had been; and the monster knew all of this as intimately as he did but with its sick edge of fascinated enjoyment. Elias wanted to tense, yell, cry, but his face was still smiling at him. He wanted to look away, but the crash of cymbals shook him in a relentless, apathetic flurry, and more and more tumbled out, none of it echoing away but combining into a louder, more grating cacophony. It knew, it knew too much, it knew _everything_ , up to and beyond when the weight of his own awareness burned him with its bareness. Elias, Elias Bouchard, detached, unending, cracked open, body invaded, mind in pieces, memory shining and strong and horrible in its completeness.
> 
> **_Good. I’m glad that we could get that cleared up._ **
> 
> The monster tattooed an eye over his chest. It wasn’t a surprising or inspired choice, but it was, indeed, a good reminder.

The confused slush of sensations from Elias again resolved into Jon’s bedroom. The blankets held over his mouth were suffocating, but he didn’t move. He stared at the wall. He didn’t move. Time slipped by. Eventually, he reached onto his nightstand to grab his phone. He called Tim.

“Hey, Jonny boy. You’re coherent early today.”

After a long moment, there was a clunk and then the scrape of a chair being pulled out. Cheer gone, Tim asked, “Jon, you okay?”

Jon hooked his chin over the blankets, the cold air fresh and bracing, shaking off that trapped feeling. “No,” he said quietly.

“You breathing fine?”

“Yes.”

“Physically uncomfortable?”

Jon breathed and tried to catalogue himself. With his mouth uncovered, the heavy warmth of his weighted blanket was comforting again, and the fluffy one overtop it was soft on his arms and neck. He flexed his scarred hand. It tingled, the skin a little too tight, as it always did in the mornings. The small of his back ached from staying in one position too long, and he shifted and stretched out his legs to alleviate it. “No,” he told Tim.

“Nice,” Tim said, a smile in his voice.

“I’m not a child,” Jon snapped.

“Sorry, I know you’re allergic to sympathy. I’ll make sure to be more of an asshole in the future.”

“I hate you,” he muttered.

“You flatter me, Mr. Sims.” Tim chuckled, then let the pause linger before he was serious again. “How are you feeling? Mentally, I mean.”

Jon struggled. The two options that presented themselves to him over and over were “bad” and “I don’t know,” neither of which seemed very helpful, so he changed tact. “There was another…Knowing.”

“Knowing?”

“The—the visions. I don’t know why but I know that’s what it’s called. The Knowing.”

Tim made a low noise of disapproval but didn’t press it. “Did it show you something that made you call me?”

“It was about Elias.” That was all he could say before the sob rose up in his throat.

“When Jonah…?”

“Yeah,” Jon choked out.

“Fuck.”

“Yeah!” A strange, disbelieving laugh burbled out of his throat.

Tim let him cry. When the ugly sobs died down to silent, shuddering tears, he heard that Tim was breathing slowly and loudly so that the speaker picked it up. Jon stumbled to match him and when he succeeded in doing so for several minutes, the tension slowly draining away, Tim said, “Okay, I think that’s enough weird breathing for us. Feeling better?”

“Yes.” A thank you waited on his tongue, but it felt too awkward for the air and he swallowed it.

“I’m glad to hear it. See you at work?”

“Yes,” he confirmed, then ended the call, cutting off Tim’s reply. Moments later, he received five texts, all sent in rapid succession.

_I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU_

_YOU ALWAYS DO THIS_

_SAYING GOODBYE ISNT A WASTE OF TIME ITS NICE_

_BYE._

_IS THAT SO HARD????_

Jon rolled his eyes and tapped out, _bye tim_.

He rolled onto his back, brushing the hair that had escaped from his nighttime braid out of his face. With the shock and grief subsided, irritation rose up in its place, flavored bitterly with fear. Whatever posturing the Eye wanted to do, he knew better. He didn’t belong to it. He didn’t care if it was a dread power or not; this world was not its plaything. If anything, _he_ wanted to exploit _it_. And he would. He flung the covers off himself, hissed as his bare feet touched the cold floor, stood to walk to the bathroom, then turned back. On his nightstand, he wrote, _Check on Elias_ , on a sticky note and stuck it to his lampshade next to his other reminders, then went to shower. There was no time to linger on Elias now. He had a meeting with Agnes Montague today.

Martin frowned at the sealed envelope in his hands, blank but for the neat _From the Archivist_ written on its front. “So yesterday, when you said ‘press tour’ you really meant it.”

“It’s a completely inaccurate description,” Jon groused. “It’s more like a series of diplomatic negotiations, but Tim refuses to call it anything else, so it stuck. You’ll need to hand-deliver that to this address.” Jon tapped the attached note.

“Hand-deliver?”

“The Lukases are old-fashioned and particular. Plus, technically that address doesn’t exist.”

“O-kay…”

“Update!” Sasha announced, and two turned to her at her desk, where she leaned close enough for the light from her laptop to illuminate her face and cast a glare on her round glasses. “Simon says he’ll ‘drop by whenever he gets the chance’, which I’m sure will be fun and not a disaster, and Manuela says she wants to talk to you about proper manners while talking to their Dark Lord or whatever before you meet. Annabelle sent us an invitation for a dinner appointment next Friday – fancy restaurant, looks like – and, uh, I texted Jane, but I’ve only gotten weird rants about how wonderful worms are so far.”

Jon grimaced but pressed on. “Montauk?”

“Julia says they’re on holiday ‘taking care of some business’ but are returning next week. They both send you their congratulations.”

Jon raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Well, Robert did. Julia said, and I quote, ‘I hope your wimp of a boss doesn’t shit the bed’.” Sasha tried to keep a straight face but cracked at the end and laughed.

“Yeah, that sounds like her,” Jon said. He tried not to sound bitter and also failed, his expression souring. He realized Martin was still standing beside him. “Why are you still here?”

“O-oh! Oh, yeah, I—I’ll just—” Martin stuttered, then headed towards the Archive stairs. At the threshold, he stopped and shamefacedly walked to his desk. “Uh, forgot my jacket.” And then power-walked out of the room. Irrationally, Jon wanted to strangle him.

Irrational, he knew, and not helpful in the slightest, but he still glared at Sasha when she gave him an unimpressed look. “Anything else?” he asked.

“Nope. Back to filing for me. Make sure Tim doesn’t get his hand burnt off.”

“If he does, he’ll probably deserve it.”

“True.” Sasha grinned. “At least he’ll still be pretty.”

Jon snorted, and his shoulders relaxed. He waved goodbye and headed up. Out in the lobby, Tim leaned on Rosie’s desk as they chatted. When they didn’t wrap up their conversation immediately, he interrupted, but Tim tutted at him and told him to have patience. Insufferable. Rather than listen to their blather, he stepped away.

The thought of Elias crossed his mind, but he dismissed it. He knew the man still worked at the Institute – God knows why – but the image of his reflection with the wrong, smirking grey eyes was unpleasantly present. Another time. He slipped out his phone.

He swiped away the notification for Ghost Hunt UK’s new video, then a text from Melanie that read, _New vid up. It was a bust but its a good vid so w/e_. Georgie had sent him four new pictures of the Admiral, all nearly identical, and he lingered over each with a smile and did not reply. In a rare show of communication, _Danny_ of all people had texted him: a picture along with the message, _made me think of you haha lol_. The attached image was a bizarrely filtered meme with a shadowed, featureless, limbless humanoid creature floating in the middle of a warped forest with white impact text that said, _SRY IM AWEKWARD_. The timestamp was fifteen minutes ago. For the last few months, Danny had lived in Florida, which meant he’d sent this at something like _four in the morning_ his time.

“Good to go!” Tim said, now beside him.

Jon didn’t move, staring at the image in compelled bewilderment. “Your brother is deranged. What the hell does this mean?” Jon asked in an accusing tone, tilting the phone so Tim could see. The moment Tim’s eyes landed on the screen, he burst out laughing. “Oh, you’re useless.” Jon started to put his phone away, but Tim grabbed it to continue cackling, surprisingly high-pitched for his low voice. “That thing does _not_ qualify as a joke,” Jon complained.

“Oh, it is,” Tim disagreed as his laughter ebbed. “It’s a stupid joke though, because Danny has shit taste.”

“Unlike you,” Jon said dryly.

“Unlike me, because I have excellent taste.”

With their bickering as their background noise, they headed off.

The most annoying part of meeting other avatars was the traveling. Some would come to you, but most of them wanted you to come to them. In the last two years, Jon and Gertrude had spent an uncomfortable amount of time together on trains, buses, and cars. Gertrude lectured him, or they argued, or they sat in silence for hours. Neither of them liked small talk. Jon tensed during the commutes and tried to lose himself in a podcast or reading, but the mistrust between them sparked like a fraying electric fence, and he couldn’t focus. Sometimes, he would ramble aloud as a way to ease the jittering energy in his bones, and sometimes she would allow this, and sometimes she told him to be quiet through some dry comment. Once, she quoted, “I wonder that you will still be talking, Jon. Nobody marks you,” like a true British academic asshole.

Traveling with Tim was better. He liked Tim, for one. For another, Tim settled into a subdued quiet once they were in motion, especially if it was a long train ride. He didn’t check his phone often, didn’t listen to music, didn’t strike up conversations with strangers like Jon might have expected. Instead, he looked outside the window at the passing scenery, hands held loosely in his lap, or closed his eyes if he was on the underground. He watched Jon wind himself up, faster if he couldn’t shift or pace, and never snapped at him or looked annoyed. He looked amused (which was almost _worse_ ) or fond (which disarmed Jon every time), and when Jon went rambling to fill the terrible lack of anything to do but wait, Tim nodded along, laughed, asked questions, cracked jokes, looked away from his window to pay attention to Jon when he grew passionate. Sometimes a disagreement pulled them into a heated debate or one of them was too tired, too sullen for anything other than silence, but most trips were easy. It was nice. Jon admitted to himself that if not for Tim beside him he would be twisting himself into stomach-cramping knots.

Agnes lived in Sheffield, and she preferred to meet at Canyon Café, a perfectly average café tucked away in a perfectly average corner of the city. It was inoffensive, round metal tables, a decent-sized window, wood accents, a mural of a canyon on one wall, all standard. When he and Tim entered the café, Agnes was at her usual seat, back to the door, cradling a coffee in her hands. And, as usual, Jack Barnabas ran the counter taking orders, though there was no line at the moment. When he noticed Jon, he smiled and waved.

“Ohh, is that the guy with the weird crush on Agnes?” Tim stage-whispered, pressing his hand against the side of his mouth in a mock show of secrecy. “He really needs to do something with his hair. He looks like an overgrown puppy.”

As if on cue, Jack pushed his flop of brown hair out of his face, which then fell immediately back into place. He was their age but looked years younger with his hair and his bright, awkward smile. “Nice to see you, mate,” Jack said, aiming the full force of his smile at Jon. “Aggie told me she had company today. No Gertie?”

“No.”

He tried to order something so he could shorten this interaction as much as possible, but Jack beat him to it, turning to Tim. “Who’s this then?”

Tim leaned an elbow on the counter. “Tim Stoker.” He jerked a thumb towards Jon. “Best friend, now his ever-weary assistant.”

“A croissant, please,” Jon cut in and forced a smile.

“Anything for you, mate,” Jack said, easy and sincere.

_Not your mate, you presumptuous ass_ , Jon thought, keeping his teeth gritted together. Tim rattled off his own order, but Jon was already walking away, leaving Tim to pay for both of them. Served him right, though it didn’t matter anyhow; the Institute paid for all their travel expenses – thankfully, because he didn’t get paid enough for this.

Agnes sat by a window looking out to the street. The times he had come here with Gertrude, he had sat in the chair adjacent to them both. But Gertrude wasn’t here, so, with a minor hitch in his step, he took her place in the chair across.

Agnes’ only greeting was to move her gaze from the street to Jon. Despite being in her sixties, her long auburn hair had little white-grey, threaded through the red like ash. She glowed in the light from the window, a warmth to her care-worn skin that reminded Jon of sun-heated rocks, her wrinkles fine and soft. She was a banked fire hidden behind a delicate, ornate grate that she could release with a moment’s will, and the intensity of her dark eyes rivalled Gertrude’s, hers consuming rather than piercing. It was hard to look at her and harder to look away.

“Hello, Agnes,” he said.

She nodded in acknowledgement.

He laced his fingers together in front of him as an anchor and to keep himself from fidgeting. “Gertrude retired, which makes me the new Archivist.” She knew this already. “Gertrude’s legacy is a…difficult one. She alienated everyone but the Institute’s staunchest allies as she pursued her goals. Adelard Dekker and yourself were the closest she came to having friends.” He thought of Michael but dismissed it; Gertrude had never been Michael’s friend. “I don’t want to follow in Gertrude’s footsteps. If it can be fixed, I want to fix it, not trade evil for a lesser evil.”

“Mm.” Agnes took a sip of her coffee.

Jon sucked in a breath to bolster himself. “I’m not an idiot. I know how idealistic that sounds, but I thought – I _hoped_ you would help. I don’t mean your cult. If the Desolation didn’t care for Gertrude, then it despises me, but _you_.”

“Why?” she asked. Her expression was unchanged.

“Because I’m tired of people getting hurt. And I think you are, too.”

She glanced down at Jon’s hand, the burn scar creeping out from the palm to the back of it.

He told her, “You can be human, fully human.”

Her gaze snapped up to his and stared. The force of her gaze pinned him back against his chair, harder than Gertrude’s most ruthless glare, because Agnes was inscrutable, the smallest gestures of amusement, intrigue, confusion, lost to him. She didn’t speak.

But she was listening. His breath shuddered with nerves, gaining strength as he continued. “It won’t be easy, but I think it’s possible. Whatever your cult says, you aren’t your patron. You’re a _person_. You’re not like Amherst or Rayner, who lost themselves centuries ago. You’re not like Nikola either. I think Nikola could reverse everything that she’s done to herself if she wanted to, but she doesn’t. She wants to twist herself until she’s unrecognizable. But you…” He wanted to smile, but he couldn’t. It felt too fake, too manipulative.

She shook her head. “Jon,” she said. “The Desolation will always destroy. Always.”

“It will always _want_ to. And we can’t destroy it or any of the rest of them, so we protect people from them instead.”

“How?”

Jon shifted his shoulders, unlaced his fingers, laced them together again. “I…I don’t know. That’s partially why we wanted to contact you first. My team and I have only known about the Fears for two years, learning mostly through records. Gertrude disagrees with our methods, and the Institute as a whole is useless, since everyone that would be helpful is ignorant. We need allies. Experienced allies especially.”

They fell silent. It quickly became unbearable. “So?” he pressed, but Agnes held up a hand to quiet him. She sipped her drink, watched him, watched the street outside. She changed her focus from one to the other in an unhurried fashion, but she moved on fast enough that it felt restless. Irritated? Torn? Jon bit down on his tongue. He realized Tim should have joined them ages ago. At the counter, Tim and Jack stood where Jon had left them, Jack content to yammer away as Tim leaned on the faux wood and smiled along with a drink in his hand – and the crumbs of a croissant on a napkin, that prick. Tim caught Jon’s eye within a few seconds, said something to Jack, waving his hand towards Jon, and strode over.

“How’s business?” he asked, then turned to Agnes without extending his hand. “It’s good to finally meet a legend like Agnes Montague in the flesh. I’m Tim.”

She hummed, but otherwise ignored him. Tim nodded gamely, prepared to continue unimpeded, but Agnes looked to Jon, her fingers clutching a little too closely at her cup. “I will think about it.”

Stunned, he sat motionless and then nodded with too much force. “Y-yes! Good!”

“That’s enough,” Agnes dismissed. She went back to her window-watching.

Tim raised his eyebrows at him.

“Uhh, yep,” Jon said. He got up, hesitated, pushed in his chair, and made for the door. Tim called for him to wait, then approached the counter again and soon swept over with another croissant. Jon made a face at him but took it. After the train ride and anxiety of that talk, he needed something light and flaky to nibble on. “You’re still a bastard,” he muttered, and Tim laughed and agreed.

When they arrived back at the station, they bought a proper lunch from a nearby shop and walked as they ate. Apparently, Tim hadn’t been wasting his time talking to Jack about the weather but had been fishing for information. Jack was a professional eavesdropper after nearly a decade working at Canyon and taking an interest in Agnes Montague, which meant he was privy to the puzzling and bizarre conversations Agnes had with Gertrude, Jude, Mike, or any other odd duck she met with there. Jack knew she was in a cult, the leader or figurehead or something like that, but the rest of the implications and confusions never coalesced into understanding, which made it easy to ask innocuous questions that led to revealing information. Due to Jack’s strange belief that he and Jon were comrades in arms in “dealing with the weird stuff Gert and Ags got into”, he was happy to be convinced by Tim to spill everything he knew under the guise of simple curiosity.

Apparently, tensions were on the rise in the cult of the Lightless Flame. Last month, Jude met with Agnes three weeks in a row, each ending with Jude more acerbic and angry than the conversation a week prior. They were planning on a big spectacle soon, and Agnes was dragging her feet. When asked to explain herself, Agnes fell silent and said nothing. She asked Jude once if she was tired of their work, and Jude replied it was the only thing worth doing. Jude dismissed the simple lives of the stupid people around them and reminded Agnes they knew the truth. Agnes nodded but said nothing. When he finished relating this, Tim put on a humbled expression and said, “I know, I know, I’m a hero. No need to thank me.” Jon rolled his eyes. Doubts, Gertrude had said. It was dangerous for a messiah to doubt. It was promising. Terrifying, but promising.

Jon felt hopeful as they boarded the train to sit for another two-hour trip back to London. His mind buzzed for the first thirty minutes, but an off-hand comment from Tim about the scenery jarred him into quiet. Tim hooked an arm over Jon’s shoulders at some point, and Jon got out his phone and earbuds to watch Ghost Hunt UK’s new video. Tim watched alongside him, though without sound, until he dozed off, his head knocking gently against Jon’s. Jon snorted and settled in, grateful for the heat to ward off the train’s overzealous air-con. He spent the rest of the trip bombarding Melanie with messages, critiquing the story, needling for more detailed information, and sniping back whenever she took a shot at him. Before he knew it, they were home.


	4. Chasing & Catching

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another week, another chapter! This chapter has my favorite Knowing so far, my favorite mix of storytelling and imagery. Hope you enjoy. <3
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: violent death; / child abuse (mention); alcohol; non-consensual drug use; manipulation; isolation; grief/mourning; injury (minor); blood (mention); murder

> Evan Lukas didn’t hate his family. He should have, maybe, at least his father, who locked him in his room when he tried to find his sister in the long empty hallways of the house, or his mother, who blindfolded him if he was ever caught making eye contact with someone. They were all cruel, all negligent, all _disappointed_ in him. Even his sister, in the end. He spent a lot of time crying and a lot of time pretending that he didn’t want to cry. He whispered to himself whenever he was alone, imagining a friend that would talk back to him instead of scolding him for being too familiar. The constant, low rambling helped sometimes and made it worse other times. He never grew numb to the pain. He wished he had, wished he could have lied to himself and said, “I feel nothing, so I must be fine,” or fallen in with his sister and said, “I will make this fear my strength.” He shivered in the chill of the house and the fog rolling over the grounds. When he left for uni, the chill stayed with him.
> 
> Society, the company of others, was more exhilarating than he could have ever anticipated. He strove to befriend every person he met, and he quickly found all the ways that he could destroy himself as he learned his limits and ignored them in order to help someone else. His first year was glorious and horrible, parties and laughter, fights and anger, hand-holding and comfort, breakdowns and screaming. He protected anyone who needed it, and he extended himself to others no matter how exhausted he was. He broke assholes’ noses – and his family paid the school to ignore it – and he refused to speak a single harsh word to a friend, even in jest. Later, the violence inside him calmed, but he stuck true to this dichotomy of excising hate and nurturing love. It was extreme, he realized years later. He met charismatic “philanthropists” who played at compassion, kind-hearted sufferers who could barely support themselves, and friendly folk who strove for balance between helping others and themselves. But Evan could not choose any but the extreme path, because the chill from Moorland House draped over him like a damp coat. If it was within his power to save someone from that curse for a _moment_ he would do it without hesitation every time. No one deserved to feel so cold.
> 
> When he met Naomi, he recognized the Lonely in her. He spoke to her, of course, befriended her, but her _smile_ , the way she held her hands, her quiet but confident voice, her crooked nose, the warmth of her body against the ice of his, she was – he loved her. When he puzzled out the feeling, it was hilariously obvious. “I’m a little oblivious,” he said with a grin, their hands clasped together like a knot. “Only about yourself,” she said, laughing, and kissed his nose, his forehead, his cheek. When he was eighteen, any touch from another burned him, and he’d burned himself to soothe those who needed it, but with years and love and comfort these simple touches were little sparks of joy, here, here, and there. He tucked her head under his chin, the curl of her hair tickling his neck. He was lucky, so lucky, despite the cold.
> 
> One night, after an evening spent tipsy with some friends at a raucous pub Naomi never liked, he walked home in the half-lit gloom, whistling the song that had oozed out of the speakers as he left. He took a longer, less hilly route, so that he would be mostly sober when he arrived home, and he cursed under his breath and giggled as the melody of the song slipped from him again and again. He couldn’t keep the tune in his head for more than a few seconds before it wandered, though he hadn’t had more than two drinks. Or was it three? Surely not more? It was good that his feet remembered the way home without his say-so.
> 
> A car door opened in front of him. A woman in casual, non-descript clothes with her hair tied back from her face stepped out. Evan moved away from the curb to give her space to walk past, but she grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to the car. “W-what?” he said. He tugged his arm away, but the effort was weak and her grip was strong, stronger than he would have expected from someone more than a head shorter than him.
> 
> “You asked me to drive you home, but you left the pub before I could find you, silly,” she explained. Her voice was vaguely familiar; he remembered seeing her smiling face at the bar when he ordered a new drink, but they hadn’t talked. Had they? He shook his head, and the world spun. “Come on,” she coaxed. “You look like you need water and some rest. You’ll be home much quicker with me than you will on foot.”
> 
> Without thinking, he nodded. Going home sounded nice. He wanted to rest his head in Naomi’s lap as she watched TV. “What’s your name?” he asked as she guided him into the passenger seat of her car. It seemed polite, since he had forgotten it.
> 
> “Tova.” She smiled. She had a lovely, bright smile, and he relaxed as he fumbled with his seatbelt.
> 
> He leaned his head against the glass and watched the buildings go by. Home soon. Naomi would make a disbelieving joke about how he could make anyone his best friend in five minutes. He closed his eyes and drifted.
> 
> The shock of the car stopping woke him. His body felt heavy, he couldn’t focus on all the shapes outside the window, he was cold, the window was cold, it was March, it had rained earlier, the street was slick. This wasn’t home. “Naomi…?” he murmured. There had been a woman with him. _Not_ Naomi.
> 
> She walked around to the passenger side and unbuckled his seatbelt. “Just a little further,” she told him sweetly.
> 
> He stayed frozen in place. His fingers were icicles. Naomi wasn’t here. None of his friends were here. The separation sung a note like a howling wind, drowning out everything else.
> 
> He was moving. She was moving him. As his focus came back, he struggled, but she closed a door behind them and restrained his hands with something hard that bit into his skin. His clumsy feet caught on something and he fell hard onto cold ground covered by a rustle of plastic. By the time he thought to kick her, she had restrained his feet, too.
> 
> She knelt by his chest. “I’m sorry about this, truly,” she told him. Her face frowned, but behind it was hungry desperation, jealous and malicious. She moved with none of the sloppy maneuvering of an amateur. She held a knife in her hands and hovered over him without flinching. “I wish I didn’t have to do this, but think about it: you’re a lowly lab assistant. Hardly groundbreaking work. On top of that, you’re unmarried, no children, estranged from your posh family. No one will die without you. But you _do_ have lots and _lots_ of friends. Everyone _loves_ you, Evan. Thank you for this. I have so much work left to do. I know you don’t understand, but that’s alright. It will all be over soon.”
> 
> Evan choked on his own blood. In the end, he didn’t think about the pain, the lack of air, the woman’s face, her words, his friends. He didn’t think about Naomi. He thought, _I always knew they would win_ , as he went cold.

The dark glaze of Evan’s last moments was stripped back to reveal the harsh fluorescents of the Archives. Tova and Evan faded, replaced with Tim, Sasha, and Martin, horrified, fascinated, and concerned. Evan’s despair and resignation stuck to the inside of Jon’s chest, and he coughed, remembering how to breathe without the pressure of so much knowledge pressing down on him.

It was Friday, the day after he and Tim met Agnes. They had decided to report everything they found out this morning rather than yesterday, since they had returned as the workday ended and Tim insisted none of them worked overtime unless it was “critical”. (More time for Jon to pace back and forth in his apartment and worry about Agnes’ _I will think about it_ and his phrasing and his inelegance and how much clearer he could have been.) They were talking about Agnes, about trust and doubts, and the air turned solid on his tongue and the space behind his eyes expanded, filled from the inside out.

“You were gone for a little while,” Sasha said softly.

Jon swallowed. “How, um…How long?”

“Five or six seconds.”

He realized Tim was at his elbow, not touching but wide-eyed and still. “Tim?” he murmured.

“You weren’t breathing,” Tim said, completely toneless.

“Oh.” Jon took a deep breath to prove that he could, and then he looked down and cleared his throat. What do you say to that? “I’m alright.”

A laugh punched out of Tim’s throat like a crow’s _caw_ , and he rubbed a hand over his face. Sasha had that careful, pinched expression that she had when she recognized the tension in the room but didn’t quite know how to navigate it. “Well, he…,” Martin started, cautious, moreso when all the eyes in the room turned to him. “He _is_ alright. For now. Let’s calm down a bit.”

They all ended up with mugs of tea somehow, settled back down in their chairs. It was absurd, but it knocked them out of their anxious spiral into a more level-headed space. Jon was tired, and he wanted to cry a little bit, though he had cried yesterday and that was enough of that.

Tim said, “We should talk to Eric.”

Sasha tapped a beat on the side of her mug, gaze on the floor. “And Michael.”

Jon shook his head. He held his mug close enough to his chest that his words sent the steam scattering. “Leave him alone. If there was anything in the statements down here, Gertrude would’ve known about it.”

“Fair enough,” Sasha said.

“I’ll talk to Eric,” Martin volunteered. While the others looked deflated, slouched against their chairs, Martin sat straight, his shoulders sloped gently. His leg bent so he could set his ankle on his opposite knee, and he rested his mug on the meat of his thigh. He looked far too put together.

“I should go,” Jon argued. “It’s my problem, and I should hear what he has to say.”

Martin smiled. “I’ll come with you then. I doubt Eric has gotten a new assistant, and he’ll no doubt want some references pulled.”

“You have work to do here,” Jon insisted.

Martin paused, a beat of consideration, then shrugged one shoulder. “I guess, but I would be more useful with you. Believe me, you have not seen Eric pull his own references.”

Jon had no arguments against that short of yelling, _I don’t trust you!_ which was not so much an argument as a fierce instinct that howled and crashed against his ribcage. He and Martin walked to the top floor together. Well, they took the lift, because neither of them was eager to climb several flights of stairs.

The Magnus Institute’s library was beautiful, rows upon rows of graceful wooden shelves packed with heavy, leatherbound tomes, hardbacks with their cloth binding worn at the corners, newer acquisitions with glossy covers, all arranged impeccably, pressed uniformly along the edge of the shelf with no gaps or misplaced volumes. Coming from the harsh lighting and ugly metal and dirty gray cardboard of the Archives made it appear all the more impressive. When Jon worked in Research, he’d wished he worked on this floor rather than the one below, so that he would have an excuse to walk through it on his way to his desk every morning. Nowadays, he was happy in the basement – albeit out of spite – but seeing a good library made his fingers itch to dart over to the nearest wall of books to touch their spines and get lost reading their titles.

By the entrance to the library was a small help desk. The woman behind it waved to Martin and teased in an undertone, “Back already?” and Martin smiled and replied, “Just here to see Eric.” She nodded and returned to her work, ignoring Jon. Not that Jon noticed.

Martin strode through the shelves straight for Eric’s office, presumably. Jon had never met the man outside of his occasional visits to the Archives to chat with Michael. Against the far wall, separated from the shelves, were a handful of offices and storage areas. Martin entered one without knocking.

“Martin!” a creaky voice greeted them the second they stepped in. “It does my heart good to see you.” Eric Delano was a man that seemed to care about his appearance but could never muster the motivation to do more than comb his fine grey hair neatly to the side and pick a nice suit and tie to muss and loosen throughout the day. He had a soft middle, weak shoulders, and a small, round face. It gave one the impression that he was a gentle elder whose greatest hardship was a habit of dipping his tie in his tea. Then he leaned his chin on his hand, and one noticed the two missing fingers on his right hand and the scar that ran down the back of it, stark white and raised in a jagged line. That was when one remembered that Eric had been one of Gertrude’s original archival assistants.

“It’s only been two days,” Martin said, eyes skittering to Jon and then away.

“Two days too long! And I see you brought Jon along with you.” His own cough interrupted him, and he pounded his chest. He grinned. “What brings you both up here?”

“Well—”

“I have a problem,” Jon told him.

“Oh?” Eric said. Irritatingly, he glanced at Martin, as if Martin would be the expert on Jon’s problem.

Jon described the basics: the physical sensation, the intimate yet distant perspectives of the visions, the who, what, where, and when. “I was hoping you would know of anything similar, something we should look into, or ideally an explanation.”

“An explanation? Those are rare.” Eric chuckled, then hummed as he thought. “Gertrude, Michael, Elias, and a Lukas. There’s something of a pattern there: information surrounding supernatural events transmitted to you while you are in a place where you feel safe, that being your flat or the Archives, the latter having the perk of being a seat of power for the Eye. It might…Martin, would you find Lumens’ _Initiation_? Tahm’s autobiography might be useful as well.”

Martin nodded and turned on his heel, murmuring as he went, “Alright, that’s 06-X-4-2-12. 06-X-4-2-12 and…”

“Not my area of expertise,” Eric admitted, “but the Eye might be trying to train you.”

“ _Train_ me?” Jon repeated, appalled.

“In a manner of speaking. Perhaps it wants to demonstrate the suffering it wants you to cause, or it wants to arm you with information that would hurt if you were to force someone to Know it themselves. It might be begging you to record statements from the Archive. You are the instrument of its power, and it wants you to be useful.”

Jon grimaced. “What about the compulsion? Isn’t that a little much?”

“Yes, that is the interesting part.” Eric drummed the fingers of his left hand and scribbled something down on a piece of scrap paper. “It’s unusual that an Entity can exert such direct control over someone, even someone attuned to it. You might be especially compatible with it, or it is expending significant effort to overcome the barriers between our world and theirs to influence you. If either of those is the case, I see no point in fighting it. It won’t be overcome short of you renouncing the title of the Archivist. Which would be your right and most likely the sane thing to do, of course.” He paused to scribble again, then shrugged one shoulder. “But those are theories, not answers. The Lukases have trained enthusiastic heirs to their power for centuries, and as far as we know they have never experienced a similar phenomenon. It is also dubious to think that the Fears have the awareness needed to focus their forces on a single and specific action like this, but those are the options I can think of off the top of my head. I’m afraid to say the Fears resist categorization. We can record the effects of a specific artifact and sketch out the limits of the Powers’ influence, but when it comes to interfacing with them directly logic more often than not fails us. I don’t mean to dissuade you from looking for an answer, as better understanding can only benefit— Martin, wonderful! Your timing is impeccable as always.” As Martin came through the door with two books, Eric held out his scrap of paper, and, after depositing the books on Eric’s desk, Martin was off once more.

The exchange was so fluid and confident it derailed Jon from the problem at hand as he stared at the doorway Martin disappeared through. “How long has he worked for you?”

Eric opened the first book, clucking his tongue at the table of contents. “Oh, I wouldn’t know. Two years? Three? But the boy’s been around much longer than that.”

“Much…?” Jon shook his head. “Why send him down to the Archives?”

“It was Gertrude’s idea.” At Jon’s scoff, he ceased his perusal of the book before him. He looked up and leaned forward on both elbows to pin Jon with the seriousness and weight of his full attention. The quick-footed geniality of his words had been replaced with a low warning, as if Jon’s foot teetered on the edge of a pit trap. “I sympathize with your skepticism, but do not mistake me for a fool. Yes, it was Gertrude’s idea, but it was a good one. Marty is wasted up here. He deserves to do more than run errands for an old man. Gertrude said you have lots of big plans and foolish ideas. Now, I’m sure you and I disagree on most everything, but I want those foolish ideas of yours to _work_.” His expression softened. The curve of his smile was warm and full of pride. “If anyone can help you do that, it’s Marty.”

Jon did not know what to say to that. Several emotions struggled to rise to the surface, but they became tangled up and confused and all sank each other. Eric returned to the book, and Jon stood silent until Martin returned with another three. “That all?” Martin asked.

“Yes, yes, thank you. Give me a moment, Jon, I want to make sure…,” Eric trailed off without looking up. He set aside his first book and reached for a new one from the stack. Furious page-flipping was the sole sound in the room for about three seconds before Eric broke in again. “You missed Gerry yesterday.”

Jon opened his mouth to say, _Why the hell are you telling me that?_ when Martin responded, alarmed, “Oh God, I didn’t forget we were on for lunch, did I?”

Jon’s brain short-circuited. _Lunch?_ Martin and _Gerry Keay_ on for _lunch_?

Eric said, “No, just dropping by to nag me, you know. He wanted me to pass on his disapproval of your new job.”

Martin rolled his eyes. “Remind Gerard that not all of us relish the idea of constant travel and getting our arms broken by monsters.”

A little _heh_ escaped on a breath as Eric grinned. “I’ll pass it along.”

Jon blinked. He was sure he was missing something. “You’re friends with Gerry?”

Martin was equally befuddled by the question. “Uh…yes?”

_Why?_

Jon bit back the word. It was too petulant, too much like a child that hadn’t gotten the toy he wanted, and far too rude. He might as well say, _Who would want to be friends with you?_ That would be cruel, though his mind already began to murmur, _What makes him so special? What makes him so worthy that he and Gerry Keay go out to lunch, that Eric talks about him like he’s some miracle-worker, that Gertrude of all people approves of him?_

With no other option, Jon said, “Huh.”

“Right-o.” Eric closed a book with a sharp _thump_. “As I suspected, Sokoloff’s metaphysics will be no help here. I’ve read bits and pieces, mind, not the full text, but his writing is atrocious, and he’s rather caught up in the ‘beings of not-being’. Interesting, but too focused on the abstract idea of the Entities to be useful.” He patted the stack of the four other books. “While these might not give you your answers, I hope that at the very least they will spark your own speculations.”

“Thank you,” Jon muttered, too quiet.

“If you think of anything else, you know where to find us,” Martin added, swooping in to take the stack once more.

“Best of luck, you two.”

Despite Sasha’s protests about revising next week’s project goals, Jon locked himself in his office for the rest of the day. It wasn’t good, and it didn’t feel good, but he couldn’t stand the hypersensitivity of his skin, the buzzing in his head, when he saw Martin. He needed distance. He needed time to allow himself to be petty without taking it out on anyone. He was bitter. He was _angry_.

Was he that desperate for attention? Embarrassing.

He opened _Initiation_ but couldn’t make it more than a page at a time before his stinging thoughts drove him back.

Gertrude had never liked him. During that interview two years ago, when he was twenty-five, smug because he knew everything and awkward because he had worked at the Institute for two years and knew how to do his job well and everything was still falling apart in his lonely little life, Gertrude asked her questions and nodded along to his answers with a little twist to her mouth. _A dreamer_ , she called him later. A week after the interview, she offered him the position of Head Archivist with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. _If you think I’m so reckless, why choose me?_ he shouted once. _You were the best option_ , she said, as if that was any kind of explanation. He asked, _Did you think you could control me?_ and she replied, _I thought you had a backbone_ , which wasn’t an answer either.

She was more honest with him than anyone. Not out of affection or trust but practicality. Of course. She told him about horror, monsters, gods, cults, artifacts, an explosion in Alexandria, a fortress that imprisoned books, a great bonfire for a cradle, Fiona Law killed, Emma Harvey burned, Eric Delano attacked, power, abuse, knowledge, ignorance, their value. She wanted him to understand why he needed to follow in her footsteps, impressed upon him the visible good she had done, how _practical_ she was. But he balked. Seventeen people, dead, because she had a threat to neutralize. Fiona, dead, because of her lack of vigilance. Emma, dead, because she had a score to settle. Bodies piled up. So much pain. Awake at night, he couldn’t push them away. He didn’t know their faces, but he could imagine the fear of their last moments, their thoughts bursting with incoherency as the debris cut through their bodies and the ground crushed the air from their lungs and the smoke suffocated their screams. And those were the ones who had died – what about the living who suffered? How could she see it all and say, _I’m doing good in the world_? She said, _Useless black-and-white thinking. If your goal is to save everyone, you save no one._ He asked, _Have you even fucking tried?_

Two years of arguing. He was still “the best option”. With reluctance, she slid over the contract and retreated to watch him fail from a safe distance. She hadn’t answered any of his calls or messages since Monday.

_What makes him so special?_

He uncurled his hands from clenched fists to press them flat against his desk. Long, deep breaths. It felt stupid without Tim doing it with him. He tried one more time: long inhale, the fullness of the air expanding his chest – hold, lightness bubbling up – slow, steady exhale as a brush of wind touched the back of his neck, tickled across his scalp, cool and clean.

Abruptly, Jon realized what was happening. He sucked in a panicked breath, but the calm almost-numbness spread under his skin and dragged his eyelids open. “Goddammit,” he murmured, half-gone, as it pulled him down into the Knowing.

> They found his body a week after he went missing. The details were clinical: throat wound, blood loss, asphyxiation, bruised wrists, bruised ankles, rohypnol in his system. The murder weapon was a knife. The murderer was probably someone who had been at the pub. They were never caught.
> 
> None of it mattered. Evan was gone. Naomi laid in their bed, ignored the knocks on their door, ignored all the missed calls, and cried. She laid in silence for hours and cried. She took off her ring, because the sight of it made her feel so hollow she was almost sick. He had been so excited to marry her. “Evan Herne doesn’t have the same ring to it as Evan Lukas,” Naomi told him, and Evan scrunched up his nose and said, “I agree, Evan Herne is much better.”
> 
> She really loved him.
> 
> Evan never talked about home. Naomi knew there was something there in that absence of information, but she never asked. She didn’t love him because she wanted to know every inch of him – it was so much _simpler_ than that. Seeing “Moorland House” carved into stone, the high metal bars of the gate that made her think of old-fashioned bird cages, the grimace of the façade of the house leaning over her, she understood why he never told her. When the door opened to reveal Evan’s joyless father, and he said that awful thing, “My son is in there. He is dead,” as if it were a dry bit of news, she understood why he had only described his family in the bare terms of “rich” and “religious” and nothing more.
> 
> Unashamed, Naomi clung to the side of Evan’s casket and sobbed, filling the silent space with her grief. When she wiped away the tears to see his face more clearly, she pressed her hand to her mouth in horror. The wound on Evan’s neck was sewn up with obvious, ugly black thread, his death-pale skin pinched with it. Despite his stillness, she was sure blood would well up from the wound and pour out and force her to watch him die as he had before. Something wrenched itself out of her throat, and she stumbled back, her trembling legs collapsing beneath her.
> 
> “Young lady,” a strong voice shocked her back to herself. Naomi realized she was surrounded by dozens of Lukases with variations on the same stiff posture and hard expressions. The black-clad figure that had spoken to her was an old blonde woman. Behind her black veil, she stared down her nose at Naomi. “Get up. You need some fresh air.”
> 
> Naomi picked herself up, careful to remain turned away from Evan’s body. The woman led her outside through the side of the house. There was no garden and no fences, just bare grass stretching out to the treeline. Despite being an hour out from sunset, the light was dim and grey. “Let’s take a walk,” the woman said, striding towards the trees. Naomi followed her.
> 
> “Who are you?” Naomi murmured. It didn’t seem important, but it felt like the thing to ask as the first branches reached out to cover them.
> 
> “Adeline Lukas. Evan’s aunt.” She tilted her head towards Naomi. Her eyes flickered over Naomi’s face, landing on her cheek, her lips, her eyes, but they did not _look_ at Naomi. “Peter’s mother. Do you know him?”
> 
> “No.”
> 
> Adeline spread her lips as if on a mechanical relay, her teeth a perfect dull white. “Perhaps you’ll meet him.” The trees bore the first signs of new life, dark green, almost black, buds sheltering close to the bark. She could see the sky through the gaps in the criss-crossing branches, yet there were no patches of sun-dappled leaflitter, no bright spots that glinted off the jewels on Adeline’s necklace. There was no path worn into the ground, the crowded, twisting trunks forcing them to step around them in a constant wobble of left to right.
> 
> Why had Naomi followed her?
> 
> “Where are we going?”
> 
> “I thought you would like to be alone.”
> 
> A cold wash of air brushed past Naomi’s ankles, and she shivered. “I would.”
> 
> Adeline nodded. She pointed forward. “The cemetery is that way, if you’re curious.”
> 
> Naomi hesitated. The cold crept up her legs. A curl of white swirled in the corner of her eye.
> 
> “Did you tell anyone you would be here?” Adeline asked.
> 
> “No,” Naomi whispered. She wished she’d brought a thicker coat.
> 
> “Wonderful. No one will look for you.” Adeline stepped backwards, threatening her again with that manufactured smile.
> 
> “W-what?” A wave, slow-moving yet sudden, rolled up her back and over her shoulders. She jumped, whipped around to see what had caused it, but all she found was a wall of fog, and when she turned back to Adeline, she was gone.
> 
> The fog curled around her and blinded her. It was the opposite of an embrace. It did not enclose her in a grip but swept away the ground, the sky, isolating her from everything but the bare hints of the forest and the damp, freezing _cold_. She stumbled forward to anchor herself against a tree, but while the thin, dead branches remained half-seen and unmoving above her head, the trunks disappeared. Scrambling on the ground, there were no roots either. Panicked now, her hands gone numb, she ran into the fog, shouting. The noise clung wet to her throat and stuck fast in the air, each breath almost choking, but she shouted and shouted, coughed and screamed and hoped someone else could hear her.
> 
> A slab of stone slammed into her knees, and she fell over it and down – and _down_ – and crashed to the bottom, her head cracking against something hard. She moaned in pain, vision blurring, mind spinning, a too-hot trickle of blood down her shin. There was a creak above her, and she swung her arm out. Her hand pressed against thick, heavy wood. It weighed down her arm, waiting to swing shut, but she stubbornly kept it up as her muddled head made sense of the scene.
> 
> She was in an open grave. She was in a _coffin_ , its lid half-closed. With a harsh motion, she pushed away the coffin lid and struggled to her feet, wincing at the pain in her legs. She was not a tall woman, but standing on the edge of the coffin she could grasp the slick grass beside the grave. It slipped in her grip, so she dug her nails into the earth and clawed her way up, spitting out the dirt that fell into her mouth. Once on solid ground, the fog flowed back in to cast the world into an amorphous haze. Naomi looked back at the gravestone she had tripped over. The stone was aged and dirty. It read, _Here Lies One Forever Forgotten_ , with a deep crack between _Forever_ and _Forgotten_ , close to breaking off. Below was the vague imprint of what must have once been a name, but it had worn away to nothing. Naomi’s insides froze. She tried to decipher the weathered letters – had the first name been short? Was the second letter a V? She couldn’t tell, and that terrified her more than knowing. Trembling anew, she kicked away from the grave. She clutched her left hand. Why had she taken off her ring? She wanted desperately to capture that warm memory of teasing each other over surnames. Tears of grief rose up again, unstoppable despite the despair of her surroundings.
> 
> Naomi dragged herself to her feet, covered in mud, chilled to her bones, and wiped away her tears. There were more graves, open and waiting, more coffins that wanted to hide her away. She turned around, and there too were graves. Maybe the forest she walked through with Adeline had been a graveyard in disguise the entire time.
> 
> “ _Evan!_ ” she screamed. “ _Evan!_ ”
> 
> But the fog killed his name.

Jon left.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I’d love to hear your thoughts <3
> 
> Warnings for the entire work (updated each chapter):  
> smoking; alcohol; compulsion (of a child; non-violent); bug (mention); possession; dissociation; psychic torture; non-con tattooing; scopophobia; violent death; / child abuse (mention); alcohol; non-consensual drug use; manipulation; isolation; grief/mourning; injury (minor); blood (mention); murder


End file.
